Blog Archives 4: Jan-July, 2008

6/30/08 The Military-industrial-security-congressional-executive Complex

Why on earth does the US have to spend more than the rest of the world combined?

People have been scared into putting all their money into "defense," which is really war-making, Empire-enforcing capability (bases in over 100 countries), not defense of the US. The scare tactic has worked well. First it was the Nazis, which was justified; they did want to take over the world. Then it was the Soviets, and it’s arguable Stalin's paranoia drove them to attempt to take over the world, or Europe: they were never remotely capable of it, let alone of Asia.

Now it is the "terrorists," which is even more effective as boogey man, or has been, because they are so completely unidentifiable; they are not Saddam, although he proved a handy target, nor the Taliban; they are stateless criminals really, even less capable of taking over the world than the Soviets, or even the Afghans.

The British and Europeans don’t call it a "war on terror;" they don’t want to dignify the terrorists with "war," which would make them warriors in a cause. Bush has been stupid enough to do just that; it’s al Qaeda’s best recruiting tool.

There’s another reason for the size of our military: the hundreds of billions the US spends on it; it’s the US’s largest business--and one of its most profitable. When there is that kind of money on the table, the beneficiaries are highly motivated to ensure that their money keeps on flowing, and in greater volume. Defense contractors place parts of their business--production, administration, whatever--in as many Congressional districts as possible. Congressmen and bureaucrats become partners.

So, it has become the "military-industrial-security-congressional-executive complex." That covers quite a bit, doesn’t it?

How can we cut the military down to size? If we spent only $100 billion on defense (real defense, of the United States alone), we would have $600 billion to $800 billion more to use on all the urgent priorities that the Imperialists say are "too expensive:" universal healthcare, education even at Chinese standards (they are ahead of us), infrastructure repair and improvement, and massive investment in alternative energy, energy conservation and adaptation to global warming.

Imperial Rome never succeeded in cutting its military: Rome was impoverished by its constant need for imperial enforcement, then fell--to the barbarian mercenaries it hired.

Dismantle the Empire!

6/26/08 The American "Pigs" Deserved This

This was the response of many Iraqis, when a supposedly pro-American Iraqi city council member in Madain went berserk and killed two American soldiers and an interpreter after a friendly meeting in the town’s council chambers.

There is no explanation for the shooting: the shooter was killed; he was depressive, but that’s about all.

Just another day in the Empire.

What’s revealing in the McClatchy report was the popular reaction, despite reports that violence in the city and region had declined due to the efforts of Awakening Sunni groups and the Americans. In fact the meeting just ended had featured opening a new city park, made possible by American and local collaboration.

What should we make of this? Ajil, the shooter, was respected, had previously had a good relationship with American forces; he’d even received a grant for an education project from them. The town, Madain, is in the Sunni region where an alliance of Sunni Awakening and US forces has reduced violence. Yet, still, the Americans are seen as occupiers: they "deserve this," according to local sentiment.

Are we to think that the Iraqis are unrepentant and ungrateful? Didn’t we go in there to save them from Saddam?

Perhaps Madain’s response is more understandable when it becomes clear that the US military, GW Bush and John McCain don’t want to leave Iraq. They foresee occupation as stretching into the indeterminate future; they foresee American troops occupying over 50 bases (large bases) in this medium-sized Muslim country US forces did their best to destroy before saving.

How would we feel, if China or Russia set up a proportional number of bases in our country (500, perhaps, given our greater size), after destroying good parts of New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami, LA and Washington, and smaller cities in between, as well as a goodly part of our infrastructure, like bridges across the Hudson and the Mississippi, airports, rail lines, highways, power plants and so on.

Our response would be at least as murderous, I think.

Perhaps the US should take the Presidential election campaign to think about more than whether we should get out of Iraq with care, or stay indefinitely. Perhaps the US really ought to consider: should it really be in this "Empire business" at all?

Over 60% of Americans think we should get out of Iraq, but even more Iraqis think so (over 70% according to the last poll).

This website makes clear that ordinary Romans were impoverished by Empire; present events make it obvious that while "defense" corporations are fattened, ordinary Americans are being impoverished, too.

6/19/08 Gold Again

Well, it hasn't yet, but it is at $891 as I write this, far higher than it was then. As I noted in an even earlier blog, when gold rises, this is not a measure of good news, except maybe for those few who put a lot of money in gold back before the run-up in prices started.

When gold goes up, it's an indication that a lot of people, speculators mostly, think that things are going to get worse before (or if) they're ever going to get better. Actually, what they're betting on is that things are going to get a lot worse. Then, they think, they'll be holding onto ingots of gold and sitting pretty.

The Senators of Fifth Century Rome thought the same thing; they were right; things got a lot worse, but they weren't right about holding onto to gold. It was extracted from them in whatever ways the barbarian invaders could devise. The Vandals, especially, were known for their inventive tortures, but what you should know is that their main object was usually gold. The Senators had hoarded it.

In fact, in the Fifth Century gold was definitely "in." All the "best people" had scads of it, literally. They had doorplates of solid gold, ceilings of gold, decorated their carriages with it, and their women and themselves and even their house slaves. When the barbarians came, they hid it, but all it took to find it was a disgruntled slave, or a little well-placed torture.

Meanwhile, the common people never saw a gold coin, and hardly ever handled a (debased) silver one. The only currency that was not debased then was the gold follis, but only the very wealthy ever owned one.

Which brings us back with a bump to the present day: the dollar continues to lose value (is being debased by policy); oil prices continue to rise, in part from the dollar's fall, in part from stagnant supply and higher demand, in part from speculation. So, gold is again seen as a refuge.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that even the gold hoarders won't ultimately win if the world continues to slide towards financial, environmental and social disaster. It would be better for the speculators to put their money into alternative energy technologies and perhaps towards supporting whatever cooperative solutions become available for resolving humankind's deep-seated problems, like being unable to feed itself and run a global industrial economy without poisoning our world.

6/17/08 In Cahoots

What does the Democratic Congress have to lose by voting to impeach? Every party that voted for impeachment then went on to win big in the next election, so the argument that it would be politically dangerous for Democrats to impeach, is a false argument.

But what if even the majority Democrats were enough complicit in the crimes committed by Bush and Cheney that they could be legally liable (for criminal acts) as well?

A fellow progressive pointed out that the Military Commissions Act was only passed by a large majority of Republicans (when they held the majority), while Democrats voted largely against. The MCA authorized torture, indefinite detention and the withdrawal of habeas corpus for detainees, so Republicans are clearly liable--the illegal acts committed under this bill include torture and more. But what about the Democrats? They didn't vote for the MCA, but a large majority of them voted for the Patriot Act, which authorized most of the detentions carried out prior to the MCA, as well as permitting other unconstitutional acts, like wiretapping without a warrant.

So, most Democrats in office would be legally liable as well.

In other words, the parties--but not all officeholders--are both in danger of criminal prosecution if Bush/Cheney are found guilty of illegal acts--because Congress, in effect, authorized those acts. So, in that way, at least, the title is accurate; they were in cahoots.

Not all Congresspeople--not all were there before 2006--but enough were and enough voted for the Patriot Act, to make the leadership of both parties liable.

These officeholders are like the Roman Senators, who connived with the corrupt and incompetent Emperors in the fifth (and fourth) century. They couldn't even conceive of acting against the Emperors for fear of a return to the turmoil of the third century, when there were often two, three, four Emperors competing for power, and fighting pitched battles all over the empire. But, more important, their power and wealth depended upon access to the Imperial government; they were inordinately wealthy, the equivalent of our billionaires. And everyone else was desperately poor.

The wealth and power of our office-holders similarly depends on access to the government; it's no accident that most Senators are millionaires. More to the point, most long-term Congress-people are compromised, because they have spent decades "going along to get along." Voting for the Patriot Act was "going along."

That's why "experience" is overrated, why impeachment remains "off the table," and why Obama's "inexperience" is a plus.

6/11/08 Global Turmoil

I do wonder if world "leaders" really even want to look at what's going on. It seems as if Bush only listens to people who tell him what he wants to hear: the war is going well; we're facing an economic slowdown, but we'll bounce back soon (he sounds like Herbert Hoover); we can spend dollars wherever, because we're the United States: we can do anything. We can spend hundreds of billions on GWOT, but not a dime on all the urgent needs we have at home.

It does look like we’re going down the tubes so fast that even if Obama gets elected (not a sure thing), it will take all his efforts, and everyone else’s just to keep us from sinking. If McCain is elected give me a fast spaceship to another planet.

About the only improvement McCain seems to offer over the recalcitrant wannabe despot in the White House is that he would set emissions targets to curb global warming--but he’d give away the emissions credits instead of auctioning them, so there would be no incentive to cut emissions.

I do wonder what he'd do for money, since he's determined to stay in Iraq, and at the same time he'd make Bush's tax cuts for high earners permanent. He's admitted he doesn't understand economics, so perhaps he just doesn't care. Maybe the US will have to marry someone like Cindy, with deep pockets; that's what solved McCain's financial problems.

There's China. Come to think of it, we're already "married" to China the way he is to Cindy: dependent on their largesse, on their willingness to continue buying Treasury bonds, or at least not to sell them. Actually, China is already attempting to diversify its holdings--as it should--but that does not bode well for the once almighty dollar.

Other dollar holders are people like Prince Bandar; he siphoned off a couple billion to facilitate an arms deal (with BAI). His deal makes you realize where money goes these days: not to people who work for it, but to the fixers, the manipulators, the speculators and the well-connected. Everyone else is hurting.

It feels like Rome's fifth Century beginning again; we've got about 75 years to go.

6/3/08 Bush's Gang

The thing about the Bush administration that some people have known since before he was elected was that his "inner circle" was almost entirely self-referential. Opposing or competing opinions were unwelcome; those who espoused them were banished.

Molly Ivins, of sainted memory, pointed out that "Shrub" had been like that since junior high school, apparently bright enough, but unwilling to entertain any ideas that conflicted with his own. I can imagine him as a teen, as leader of a rich kids' clique at school, sneering that whatever Molly, or someone else outside the clique might say or think was not even worth talking about.

Roman Emperors in the run-up to the downfall of the Empire were like this, too: incurious, convinced of their own sanctity, using any medium available to justify themselves and their own claim to power. Their inner circles were as inward-looking as Bush's. Honorius was a Great Emperor to the masses; people around him knew he had only one interest: his roosters, but they praised him. Valentinian III was The Blessed Augustus to the people, yet his inner circle hid his continual amatory exploits from the public and lauded him as the fount of wisdom.

So, Scott McClellan, who followed Bush to Washington from Texas, was one of Bush's buddies in his inner circle. He wasn't someone who made decisions; he was only the mouthpiece for those who did. But he was one of the gang (literally, if you think of them as gangsters).

Which is why I'm not surprised that McClellan refrained from any criticism until years after his resignation; it took that long for him to work his way free of the hothouse atmosphere inside the inner circle. After all, here was a President who would tell General Sanchez, prior to the assault on Falluja:

'Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell!'

There have been many sociological studies of small groups; they demonstrate ways in which seemingly normal people accept the most hideous behavior--as long as they're under the influence of the group. Humans are more herd animals than we like to think.

I hope that an Obama administration (if we're lucky enough to elect one) will build in safeguards against precisely this kind of inner circle insularity. Since Democrats tend to follow FDR's model and appoint experts of conflicting views, the chances are good, especially since Obama is not Bush.

6/2/08 Obama The Writer

Most people know at least the outlines of his upbringing by now, but this memoir makes each part of it amazingly vivid. His white grandfather, and grandmother, as well as his mother, his Indonesian step-father and finally his Kenyan father--and Kenyan grandmother and grandfather--all come to life on these pages, but so do his many half-sisters and brothers, and their families. His exploration of Kenya includes myriads of relatives and his family's history even before his late grandfather, who had been a British servant before he made good as a landholder.

In some places the book lags a bit. However, his short rumination on the law and on its role for both justice and injustice was extremely moving and his vision of what America could be was a powerful evocation.

Let me make something very clear here. Obama is not a Muslim, but the source of the rumors is that there were a number of Muslims in both of his non-American families. Obama's Indonesian stepfather had to be Muslim to survive, once Suharto's military took over: non-Muslims were equated with Communism. Further, his Kenyan grandfather converted to Islam, but not his father. In addition his oldest brother converted to Islam more recently. But Obama was not raised as a Muslim. He was once enrolled as "Muslim" in an Indonesian school for his step-father's safety, but he was later enrolled there in a Catholic school. His prep school, Punahou in Hawaii (he was a scholarship student), was non-sectarian. He was without religion until after his organizing work in Chicago, when he encountered the notorious Rev. Wright's church. It is not clear from Dreams as to when or how he became a Christian, only that he and Michelle were married in Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, from which he has just now resigned his membership.

Dreams describes much about Barack Obama's extraordinary background--who else in politics is both all-American and so international in his (or her) upbringing and experience? What is extraordinary is that this book was written by him prior to politics and not by a ghostwriter. It is extremely well-written, and he demonstrates a deep understanding of character, as well. Obama could have been a professional writer, even a novelist.

His loss to writing, however, is the nation's gain. Merely on the basis of this book alone, I hope he makes it to the White House.

5/26/08 Memorial Day

Since Korea, Americans have been dying, not for Freedom, but for Empire. That may be upsetting for the wives, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters who lost someone in the succeeding wars, but we all need to face certain facts.

The war in Vietnam did not protect freedom. Communist Vietnam is now a favored market partner, and the US is dependent upon the People's Republic of China financially, and as manufacturer.

Ditto the Iraq war: it was not fought to protect US freedom, but to gain US corporate control over its oil, and its markets. Saddam may have been a terrible dictator, but Iraqis and Iraq have suffered much more at US hands than at his. Besides, Saddam was a US partner until shortly before the first Gulf War.

American soldiers are rarely dying for Freedom; they're dying for empire, and for bankrupting this nation, hollowing it out for private profit, which is what McCain is for: continuing in Iraq and confronting not only Iran, but Russia and China as well.

Re: the blog below: I've finally gotten rid of the McCain ads. I had to cut out all image ads entirely, not that it will make much difference: who among you actually clicks on ads? It would be nice if someone did.

5/25/08 Those Pesky McCain Ads

I'm unabashedly for Obama, and virtually everything on this website affirms that in one way or another. On the other hand, McCain has never been one of my favorite politicians, so the ads of him returning, salute at the ready, "war hero," looking nothing like his pictures now, I found absurd, a bit ridiculous. The other ads with his pouchy, grinning pus, I found to be suitable counterpoint.

I didn't really think much about the ads. I was more intent on saying what I thought was important. I've developed a kind of visual filter that led me to ignore most ads; others do too, so I suppose that's why so few people click on them. I haven't clicked on many ads, either. As per Google rules, I'm not allowed to click on the ads on my site, hence the difficulty I had removing these.

Not only has McCain never been someone I admired, but the more I've looked into his past and his record, the less I've liked. It's true he was tortured, but I find it curious that he can be described as a "war hero." He's a war survivor, and he underwent some serious abuse, but not only was he not heroic until later, his ordeal makes it likely he's still suffering from PTSD; he was never treated for it. This seems especially so since he's known for an uncontrollable temper.

I don't think that makes him qualified to be President: quite the opposite.

McCain is also no "maverick," especially now, since he's running on supporting Bush's war unreservedly, and on making upper-income tax cuts permanent, tax-cuts he originally opposed. His war hero and maverick status were thoroughly discredited in the whole dance over torture: first he unequivocally opposed it, but in the course of the legislative battle, he compromised basic principles to get a bill the President supported, one that still allowed torture.

So, considering the shock my wife experienced when she ventured to my site--seeing all the McCain ads--I realized they were causing a major disconnect.

After all, if McCain wins, this website will be even more prescient. In other words, if he wins, I think the Decline and Fall will be that much more inevitable.

With Obama we have a chance, but only a chance, of avoiding it.

5/23/08 Privatization in America

"It is like making families of executed persons pay for the bullets they are executed with," al-Nazzal said. [Truthout, Maya Shenwar, 5/23/08]

In the US of 2008, this is how things are done. Prisoners in prisons are charged for their stay, if they have means; in the local police station (in which I had the misfortune to spend several hours this week) fingerprinting costs the person being fingerprinted ($10.00).

There was an older man at the station who was more unfortunate than me. I had to pay $150 to get my car back: my car had been impounded because it had rolled into the street from its parking place. The older man, partially disabled, black, a former carpenter who now can't work because of a back injury, was also trying to get his car back; it had been stolen, and recovered by the police.

Recovered by the Town police, not the City's, which was unfortunate. The City policeman covering the car theft (the perpetrator had been caught) had told the man that he needed to keep the car under police auspices as material evidence (it had been badly damaged), while the case was ongoing. The man had agreed. What else could he do?

But the Town, unlike the poorer but Democratic City, did not have a pound of its own, so it stored the car at a body shop. The body shop charged the Town daily fees for its storage.

The Town demanded $300 from the car's owner to get his car back.

The man didn't have $300 and, with the damage, the car wasn't worth that. So, his car was stolen, it was damaged by the thief, and the Town was charging him, because the City police had requested that it be held, by the Town, as material evidence.

The officer who released my car from the City's pound agreed that if the car had been held in his pound, he would not have been charged, since it was impounded due to theft. But it was held by a private business.

Don't let anyone tell you that privatization is benign.

Furthermore, no one listened to this man at the City station (built like a bunker), until my wife spoke up for him (she had drawn out his story) and pointed out the injustice here. After all, he was black, Jamaican, uneducated and poor.

And this is in "liberal" New York State.

5/22/08 Peak Oil?

Oil production is flat, demand is increasing. Demand is increasing because the huge national economies of China and India are growing at double-digit rates. Thanks to Bush's leadership, they have both been encouraged to invest in oil-consuming industry, not developing alternative sources of energy. While US demand is slack, it is slack at an unsustainably high level: US per capita consumption of energy is about twice that of Europe's.

I drive, as little as possible, a small, relatively efficient Suburu in the Northeast US, but I am continually surprised by the preponderance of big SUV's and "passenger" trucks in the flow of traffic. In other regions small cars are an even smaller minority.

Our whole settlement and market pattern has been built on the assumption of cheap energy, but energy was never really cheap, since it was not renewable, and since it costs us tremendously in environmental and global warming terms.

There is still oil out there, but it will be more and more expensive (that's what peak oil means), and the US will have to radically restructure even if it were to continue to base its economy on oil. To me it is obvious that the sooner we massively subsidize and therefore invest in alternative energy (not food-based), begin to reshape our markets to favor local over distant sources, begin to favor mass-transit over the personal car--or long-haul truck--the better off we will be.

Essentially, the US is being progressively priced out of the oil market. Peak oil is not something we can stop; only something we should adapt to as quickly as possible.

Goodbye American profligacy.

The Roman Empire was powered by slaves; when slaves became prohibitively expensive (because Romans couldn't afford the military needed to capture them) the Empire fell on increasingly hard times and ultimately fell.

The US has been powered by oil at least since about 1900. The only way the US could possibly maintain its place in the world would be to find environmentally benign alternatives to oil (and coal) and rebuild itself accordingly. Foreign adventures designed to hold onto oil resources abroad are a huge waste of money (and lives), as well as the path to bankruptcy and environmental disaster.

We must slash Defense expenditures and use the revenue to: subsidize better mass transit, solar, wind, geo-thermal and non-food bio-fuel energy sources, and people-friendly urban settlement, not suburban sprawl.

5/19/08 Shooting the Quran

And the US had a soldier in Iraq using the Quran for target practice?

It's always interesting to hear the military try to justify itself--while blaming the individual soldier: another "bad apple." But notice: his name has not been released, and he has not been punished, just sent home: a reward of sorts.

If you look up Evangelicals and Army on the net, you'll find many references to Evangelical Christians taking over more and more chaplaincies, and being more and more aggressive about promoting their particularly assertive brand of fundamentalism in the military branches. Not all fundamentalists are anti-Muslim, but many are like Pastor Hagee; he leads fundamentalists in supporting the most militant foreign policy of Israel's right wing--which could be described as extremely anti-Muslim.

Now think about it. What kind of man would scrawl obscenities in a Quran, a book revered as holy in the country in which he's stationed, and then use it for target practice? There were nine bullet holes through it.

One of the parts of the Bible that many fundamentalists focus upon is Revelations. It purports to foresee the doom and promise of the coming Apocalypse. And when it will come. A fundamentalist friend of mine pointed out more than once: Iraq is where the whore of Babylon would have been--or might be now. And turmoil in this region, so many keep predicting (joyfully), will lead to Armageddon--when True Christians will ascend bodily to Heaven, and Christ will lead the remaining faithful in the final war against the Anti-Christ.

Now, put it all together: some in the military, we don't know how many, but I'll bet it's a good many more than this one soldier, are Christians of this kind; they might use any occasion they can manage to try to ignite the final war.

When I asked another fundamentalist last year if she thought the war in Lebanon might be the beginning of the End, she said, "I hope so." She was serious!

I'm sure the Quran-shooting soldier was, too.

In the late Roman Empire they venerated relics to try to defeat the pagan and heretic barbarians; they also dishonored their gods.

Despite of, or because of, all that Rome fell in 476.

5/14/08 Crazy Leaders

Ahmadinejad, according to his biographer, appears more moderate than he really is. He's not only an extremist in Iran's politics--a hard-line militarist who wants to bring the benefits of the Iranian revolution to the world-- he's also an extremist in Shiite Islam, believing in the literal and imminent return of the Mahdi. So like Bush!

And like Bush, and McCain, he only tolerates Democracy as long as it works for him. He believes that he should lead the Shiite revolution; he believes that the people really have no say; it's up to Allah.

An article pointed out that McCain's current endorsement of Supreme Court Justices like Alito and Roberts as his template for future appointments would, if carried out, effectively end Democracy as we know it. Both Roberts and Alito appear to subscribe to John Yoo's extremist Unitary Executive doctrine, which would establish an all-powerful President, and consign Congress--and the courts--to irrelevance. It would be a transition familiar to Roman history; it's essentially how Caesar, and then Augustus converted the Republic into an Empire.

And McCain is about as hot for war as Ahmadinejad!

Bush we know is a born-again who Believes. Like Ahmadinejad. McCain, it appears, is too, if his relation with Pastor Hagee is any indication. But maybe he's about as removed from Hagee as Obama is from Rev. Wright? Still, he not only subscribes to a Unitary Executive, but he believes we should stay in Iraq, attack Iran and confront Russia and China. It doesn't matter if he also believes in the End Times; he'll bring them on anyway.

Crazy. And then there is the lone woman--Clinton--who vowed, unnecessarily given the question--to "obliterate" Iran. It's a statement comparable to Ahmadinejad's mis-translated quotation about wiping Israel off the map, except it's not clear Ahmadinejad actually meant that: the Persian may have meant: he looked forward to when Israel would be replaced by a bi-national state.

Obama actually sounds like the grown-up, the sane one: we can talk, he says.

Perhaps he's wrong. Perhaps both we and our adversaries are insane, and the world has gone mad. Other world leaders--Putin, Hu Jin-tao, Sarkozy, Brown--are either too intimidated by Bush, or flexing their own muscles.

If the world has gone crazy, then pray for sanity (but prayer didn't save the Roman Empire).

5/4/08 Like the Battle of Algiers

The parallels are uncanny. After being thrown out of Vietnam, the French tried to hold on to Algeria in the late 1950's. Algeria was and is a major oil producer for France. Unlike Iraq, it was also a French colony, with a large and prosperous French Colon population.

The parallels to Iraq, and to Petraeus, become obvious as the French moved to isolate and kill all the FLN leadership. They used informants, and torture--including a primitive form of waterboarding--and blocking off large parts of the city. While the US uses huge cement barriers for isolating quarters in Baghdad, the French used tangles of barbed wire in Algiers.

The French also tried to pay off the Algerians, and to treat them civilly, when they could, just like the Americans in Iraq.

The Algerian insurgents used bombs against civilians, mostly French Colons, and shot collaborators. The Iraqi combatants use bombs against other sects and the Americans, and also execute collaborators. The French bombed the homes of insurgent leaders--primitive bombs activated by plungers. The US bombs them from the air, or with tanks, and levels whole neighborhoods.

There were some major differences, aside from the large French Colon population: first, Algerians were relatively unified against the French; their differences only came out later in civil war, whereas the Iraqis are already fighting theirs: various sides have recruited American support. In fact, the US funds almost everyone in Iraq except the populist Sadrists. Some Mahdi Army factions are aided by Iran.

The parallels between Algiers and Baghdad only make it all the clearer: the US is engaged in an imperial war to retain control of Iraqi oil and markets, just as France tried to hold onto Algeria, not only to buttress its waning imperial prestige, but for the oil in its deserts, and to dominate its markets.

In the end the French won the battle, but lost the war. Their torture, quarantined neighborhoods and squads of troops paid off--in the short run: the insurgent leaders were captured or killed. Algiers returned to restive "peace."

But in less than two years there was a seemingly spontaneous uprising of the Muslim population of Algiers. There was no stopping them. DeGaulle bowed to the inevitable: Algeria became independent soon after.

The lesson: military suppression by an invader cannot long prevent a nation from regaining control, once it is politically mobilized. It will happen in Iraq, the only question is when.

Must we spend $179 billion to stay through 2008?

5/2/08 What Could Make a Difference?

The nastiness of the election campaign, the undercover racism that could derail Obama has erased the optimism of the early months of the primaries.

McCain, and the media, work together, it seems, to present this old war-horse as the "Straight-talker" he hasn't been for many years. Meanwhile, the same media seems comparatively gentle towards Hillary, who they've attacked consistently since her time in the White House. And they go after Obama with every niggling stupidity about anyone with whom he's associated.

Has the media picked up on McCain's connections with the Rev. Moon, who not only went to prison for tax evasion, but who champions a much more anti-American message than Obama's pastor? Has the media mentioned the right-wing in-Senate prayer group to which Clinton belonged?

Meanwhile, the Iraq war has gotten worse again. The surge has patently not worked, simply placed the US on one side of a political conflict. Furthermore, Afghanistan and Pakistan are heating up, and oil has come down from $120 a barrel, to $114. Gas sells for $3.85 where I live. A tax holiday on the gas-tax would probably undo the one positive effect of high gas prices; it would rekindle sagging demand for gas, driving the price even higher.

The recession may not be official, but the economy looks more and more like stagflation, with the Fed's help. Oh, and the dollar is rallying, but it's unlikely that it will rise much. The days of the greenback's rule has come to an end. By making nice with the Saudis maybe Bush can forestall the inevitable: oil traded in Euros, but that's one of the major reasons why oil's price keeps on going up. The dollar is still way overvalued, because of all the hundreds of billions squandered on defense expenditures and a stupid war, and because we import so much more than we export.

I've yet to mention global warming and global food shortages, which are related by climate change and policy. As the wealthier nations switch to corn to produce fuel and (possibly) reduce greenhouse emissions, foodgrains run short.

Okay: two wars, a recession, inflation, a sinking dollar, an environmental catastrophe getting worse and worse, rising global food and political insecurity--

But we're fixated on how effectively Obama repudiates the clownish remarks of his former pastor!

Again it's like the Romans of Cirta, who watched the animal games, while the Vandals took over their city, and then enslaved or killed them.

4/28/08 The Games Play On, the World Slides South

My mother used to be informed, the Democratic activist in our little town, but now she's 95 and losing much of her memory; she's rarely this lucid. But she still insists on watching PBS TV news every night. Somehow, the reports of the dollar sinking, fuel prices exploding, the sub-prime mess, the disappearance of credit, the official recession, all have escaped her consciousness.

But when I liken the current situation to a late 1920's context, she begins to understand: if McCain is elected, it would be like Hoover after Coolidge, but with the depression already begun.

It occurs to me: the reason she hasn't an inkling of the economic and military disasters facing us is partly because of the medium. She used to read newspapers and newsmagazines like In These Times. Now, although she's still capable of reading something very short, she doesn't have the memory to make sense of what she's reading if it's more than a brief note--sort of like our President! But TV just goes past her; she doesn't have to think, only to perceive; nothing is retained.

Telling her the litany of ills we face makes me realize: the US is in bad shape: not just recession, but inflation, too. Not just inflation, but a falling dollar and $120 oil; not just one disastrous war, but two; not just a huge military, but one more costly than all other militaries combined; not just huge debt, but the largest; not just global warming--and so on.

Yet many people care only about American Idol, or whether the Yankees or the Red Sox win.

In the lead up to the fall of the Roman Empire, there were cities under siege in North Africa and in Gaul where authorities kept the Games going, wild animals slaughtering and being slaughtered to acclaim, while the barbarians breached city walls and took over: the authorities didn't want the people to panic. With the Vandal and Goth takeovers in these cities, many of the game-obsessed Romans were enslaved, or killed.

I don't expect real barbarians at our gates--just our own military and police--while we watch American Idol and the world slides south. McCain is another Hoover, or perhaps like one of the last Roman Emperors: senescent, economically illiterate, blind, and pugnacious. "More wars, my friends."

Could an inspiring leader like Obama make a difference? Could Hillary inspire the nation to embark on a new direction that addresses these ills?

We need leadership that inspires and is open to popular energy, not hogtied by the corporate interests that have gotten the world into this mess.

4/26/08 Populism Hits a Wall

Hillary had a genuine impulse towards reform back in 1993. Her "experience" was "learning" that you couldn't fight them; you had to join them. That's what Bill learned, too. Items like the welfare "reform" followed, and NAFTA, and a lot of other Republican lite policies. And $109 million.

So now, Hillary pits her "experience" against Obama's honesty? His decency?

Obama isn't just Obama; he embodies a movement for reform, for doing things differently even more than Hillary did back in 1992. That's what Clintonistas mean when they say Obama is superb, but he won't be ready until 2016. The longer you stay in Washington the more you are hardened by it; it's a culture of business, after all, the business of politics. You pay, I sell, and vice-versa.

Pennsylvania, Hillary boasts, is "the turning of the tide." If it is, then worry for all of us. It is possible Hillary could win against McCain (the odds would be lower than with Obama, I believe) and she would be far better than McCain. But she would fall far short of where we could go. 2008 is an opportunity, not to go back to the '90's (which weren't as great as Hillary boasts), but to fundamentally reform a corrupt, disintegrating, discredited system, to reverse the trend towards plutocracy, and to create a new, more democratic nation: reform reminiscent in scope to FDR's New Deal.

Perhaps things aren't bad enough yet.

Obama represents change not just because of Obama himself, despite his obvious talents as organizer, campaigner, legislator and inspirational speaker. His approach as community organizer certainly inspired the movement arising around him; his campaign encourages volunteers in a way I haven't seen before. But the movement transcends him.

Think of it in terms of the numbers of people involved: in campaigning for him; giving money to his campaign, and showing up at rallies, the numbers of independents and former Republicans who have rarely voted, but are now passionate for Obama, and the young people who haven't been excited by a political campaign since "clean for Gene" and RFK, but who come out for Obama in droves--and vote for him.

If Hillary wins the nomination, a lot of these new Democrats will probably just stay home as in 1968. And the selfish class could win again--with the loyal "maverick" McCain--or, with Hillary, stop reform from going too far.

4/23/08 Grandma "Thrown Under the Bus"

What he said about her is not extraordinary. My father, while educated and "liberal," once referred to a younger black fellow teacher as "the boy following me" on a school trip with another station wagon full of kids. I don't think he even knew he said it. It was probably the context: what he thought a park ranger would understand, but still.

My grandmother also told me Russians spoke like monkeys; she was a Hawthorne, Nathaniel's granddaughter. She had lived abroad and her well-traveled husband founded the International Book Review.

Prejudice is not pretty. The reason conservative columnists excoriate Obama for "telling" about his grandmother is: they want to hold onto their own prejudices, and they don't want anyone telling on them, either. They are doing the same thing his grandmother did: they are warning their readers about the dangerous black man.

I wonder whether America is ready for the best chance we have, but isn't sure yet, because he is black.

Romans didn't have our kind of elections; the Senate ratified the Army's selection. There was one Emperor, however, who might have made a difference: Majorian was chosen by the reigning strongman in the last decades of the Empire; he offered hope. He actually advocated for the common people and won battles, but the general was able to do away with him just in time, that is before he became powerful enough to take power away from the general.

Our elections might serve the same purpose. Dig up everything you can about Obama, and if there isn't enough, make it up, and repeat it, over and over.

But Obama doesn't stoop to this level, even though he has more than ample opportunity with Hillary now, and McCain later.

Hillary and Bill, according to Michael Moore, sought spiritual counsel from none other than Rev. Jeremiah Wright after the Lewinsky scandal. Obama never mentioned it, nor said anything about the queer sect she belongs to in the Senate, which apparently advocates power above all else, and is mostly peopled by rabid right-wing Republicans.

Admirable of him. I hope people see his basic honesty soon.

One problem is that so many assume that "all politicians lie, cheat and steal," so he must, too.

Obama is ready for the country. After Pennsylvania, I wonder if the country is ready for Obama.

4/18/08 How to Recruit an Imperial Army

Made me think about the Roman legions: they recruited the way we’re recruiting now, from rural out of the way parts of the country, and blasted cities, from the poor and also from abroad. But they also needed incentives: spoil.

The Roman legions carried off masterpieces of Greek art, or burned them, and anything else they could grab. Captives, of course, were the main prize. They were sold as slaves. Generals came back wealthy beyond imagining, but the common soldiers carried off enough to build small villas on the outskirts of empire, and Rome prospered—for awhile.

Maybe we should bring back slavery: that would solve the problem our poor corporations have in paying high wages. We should just capture our labor pool. And American soldiers would gain from each slave sale, and would be able to sell anything else they carried off. Think of it: the US would spend so much less on its wars—including the additional ones McCain says we’ll have to fight soon.

And recruiting for American soldiers would really pick up: the American Dream could be to rip off the rest of the world and get rich quick.

Why not? The Romans did it, and we style ourselves the new global empire.

This one small change could also close up our trade debts: we’d carry off enough of value from everywhere else that we could even pay off the Chinese.

Or maybe we should recognize: the US Empire costs all of us many trillions of dollars, but only a very few—like Exxon, Halliburton and Bechtel owners--really benefit.

4/16/08 A Little Subversion and Obama

Some stockholder initiatives propose smaller executive pay-packages. The pay for CEO's and other high officers of large corporations has reached absurd levels, even when their companies lose money: tens of millions of dollars even when they're fired.

Workers make one three-hundredth to one five-hundredth of CEO pay. But CEO's keep more of "their" money, because of the Bush tax cuts, the tax cuts that "anti-elitist" John McCain wants to make permanent. He only owns how many homes?

Other stockbroker initiatives propose action on global warming, on more environmentally friendly corporate policies. These also make sense, except that these initiatives might reduce legally mandated maximum profits, so the Board opposes them, too.

I vote for them, though I know that the vast majority of shares are controlled by the Board and the executive officers; they will be voted down--until they are not.

Hillary says that Obama must be an elitist, because he said working people feel bitter about their economic lot and cling to guns and religion. As he pointed out; those are the only things they have left--the elite have taken away everything else.

The trade deals helped take their jobs away, the treaties campaigned for by Bill and Hillary back in the day: NAFTA and China. The agreements helped the very rich, which helped Bill and Hillary when it came to amassing $109 million. But now that Hillary is running for President, she's discovered that NAFTA should be renegotiated, after all. That's always been her position she says now: not the way I remember it.

I went door to door for Obama in Scranton. After, at a Subway, the young counter woman argued vehemently for Hillary, saying, "But they all lie, cheat and steal. At least Hillary is a woman."

Yet Obama is attacked for telling the truth: people do feel bitter. And while Hillary and McCain are worth over $100 million, Obama and Michelle's total assets are less than a million. His multi-millionaire opponents accuse him of being an elitist!

Further, Hillary's campaign emails sound desperate: they accuse Obama of being too successful in raising money; he can outspend her three to one without depending on deep-pocket donors, or on personal loans from his own fortune, the way she does.

The selfish, imperial class will stop at nothing, as it did in Rome. They have to stop someone who is moderate, careful and reasonable, because Obama is also dangerous: to them. He's less beholden to big money than any candidate who has gotten this far.

4/15/08 Torturing for Armageddon

Then there are the food riots in places as disparate as Haiti, Egypt, Mexico and Burkina Faso because of soaring food prices caused in part by the diversion of corn and palm oil into "bio-fuel." Feeding my Suburu deprives hungry people and further degrades the ecosystem. At least I don't drive an SUV or a Suburban.

Unrest driven by high food prices led to the French Revolution, and contributed to the Russian and Chinese revolutions as well.

What has been the developed world's response? We're upset that people go hungry, but humanitarian actions are not our major response.

Condi Rice showed more dramatically what Americans might do, back in 2003. As NSC head, she chaired meetings about torturing detainees. The meetings were highly detailed according to ABC: setting up what the CIA could and couldn't do, including how many times a technique like waterboarding could be used. Other participants included AG Ashcroft, DOD's Rumsfeld, VP Cheney, State's Colin Powell and CIA's Tenet.

"It's your baby, go do it," said Rice to Tenet at meeting's conclusion, establishing torture as state policy.

Why conflate food riots with torture? Because the competition over "feedstocks" for fuel is what landed us in Iraq, threatens to drive us into Iran and could potentially set the developed world against poor countries who can't feed themselves.

In other words, the US response to competition for "our" gasoline is to crush it, by any means possible. But can we? Can we browbeat the impoverished world with our Predators and Raptors--and torture? Or will it take many more Iraqs? This is the "more wars, my friends," that McCain predicts.

Industrial civilization is based upon ready access to non-human sources of energy, so it is true that "our way of life" is at stake. But China has a better idea than hoarding the world's oil and grain; it's building Dong-Tan, a new eco-city that will have a small ecological footprint, sustained by energy from the wind and sun--and food produced locally, enriched by the city's composted wastes. China plans to build at least 400 new cities, so this is an important template for the future.

Instead of brutal, winner-take-all warfare, a sustainable economy can be a source of cooperation. We all have sun, wind--and algae (the newest, most benign feedstock).

We do face a choice: Armageddon or Eden.

4/15/08 How to Skew the Record on McCain and ObamaAt the link, http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_douglas__080407_how_mccain_s_stateme.htm I dissect how what McCain actually said is turned into how Obama lied about it; it's a dissection of the conservative propaganda machine in action.

And then I look at what McCain meant and how he could drive the US into bankruptcy with his "vision."

4/14/08 1984 was 24 Years Ago

Big Brother makes noises about expanding to Iran the continual war that is justification for militarizing and controlling all the rest of us. When an interviewer pointed out that the war in Iraq was unpopular, VP Cheney replied: "So?"

Maybe, just maybe the American People are smart enough to get us out of this nightmare. But I've heard too many cases of computer voting machines creating votes. For Bush: Townships in Ohio in which Republican votes outnumbered registered voters by 100's to one; a town in Iowa with a few hundred votes, in which 5,000 voted for Bush. Touch-screen voting machines have been easily hacked; optical scan machines ditto. A law (HAVA) requires all states convert to computerized voting. My state, NY, is the last to comply. We've had perfectly reliable lever machines for decades, but no one makes them; the last manufacturer sells computer voting machines, instead.

There have been impressive statistical studies which show that the last three elections must have been stolen (2006 just not effectively enough).

Do we really have a democratic system? There has been chatter about various primary votes not matching exit polls, so it's possible (likely?) this is still going on.

And then there's the mainstream media. They do cover stories--about Cheney's arrogance, or atrocities in Iraq, or government corruption--but somehow what people remember are the Celebrities, the records of ball teams and the "gaffes" of politicians a little bit critical of The Way Things Are.

The best "gaffe" was Obama's: he gained from saying he'd meet personally with leaders who don't agree with us, but gaffes and smears are what the media's campaign feeds upon. Yet, when McCain persisted in not knowing the difference between Shiites, Shiite Iran and Sunni al Qaeda, the media quickly forgot it.

Surveillance, torture, computerized voting, media propaganda, continual war: all are for what purpose?

To persuade Americans that Empire is what everyone wants, along with super corporate profits and CEO's earning tens of millions a year, a military that is still too small, even though it has bases all over the world and spends more than all other militaries combined. Finally we will be persuaded that we want a Bush clone in the White House.

1984 anyone?

4/1/08 Plutocracy or Mob Rule

Progressives are talking about reviving Glass-Steagall. This law prevented banks from speculating in dubious financial instruments like "securitized" mortgages, AKA mortgage-backed securities. Those securities, "securitizing" sub-prime mortgage loans, were the ones that got our financial system into this mess. If progressives were able to tackle the problem (and soon they may be able to), they would at least call for some semblance of the legal and regulatory apparatus that put an end to the speculation leading to the 1929 economic collapse.

So, does Treasury Secretary Paulson address the problem? No. He trots out a reorganization chart, which could simplify financial regulation down the road, perhaps, but does not deal with how credit markets have been so egregiously mishandled, especially by the Fed--to which he wants to give new regulatory powers.

Glass-Steagall set up commercial banks as a regulated class of institutions, which, in return for the very profitable privileges of access to Federal Reserve cash and credit, were prohibited from even dabbling in securities markets. If Glass-Steagall had not been dismantled under Clinton, US commercial banks would not have been affected by sub-prime loan defaults. We might not have had the past half-decade's feverish speculation and merger mania (fueled in part by the capital created from those securitized instruments), but the US (and world) would not now be facing a credit crunch.

What's really happening is that the Bush administration, and its Wall Street allies, are trying, half-heartedly, to put a regulatory system in place that does not regulate, before the end comes--the advent of a Democratic administration, which, I hope will regulate the financial sector.

To put this into the perspective of my website: a self-destructive selfish class that drives nations and empires to ruin, Paulson's ploy makes perfect sense. If you can divert enough politicians from talking about the regulations needed, and instead get them to argue heatedly, for example, over whether the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission should be merged, then people will stop harping on the need for regulation altogether.

The wealthy institutions and individuals, who brought us the escalating sea of red ink, can then continue their unrestrained looting of the global financial system, and even ask the Fed to help them, the way Bear Stearns stockholders were helped: they walked away with some of their profits, paid by US tax-payers, even though their speculation helped fuel the credit-crunch. Meanwhile homeowners are driven into the streets through rising foreclosures. This isn't capitalism; it's a corrupt plutocracy.

3/27/08 Stagflation II

Is the Fed just acting blindly to prop up the economy without much thought about the long run consequences?

What we have here is an attempt to force another Presidential economic cycle. A full-fledged recession would be even more disastrous for the Republicans than attempting to create a "soft-landing" (with stagflation). Things are looking bad for the party of big business, but prospects for McCain and for other Republican candidates would look even worse if we had a recession.

I went to a county Democratic Party committee meeting last night, and the place was mobbed. I've never seen so many Democrats; the party, even in places like Dutchess County, NY, is more optimistic than I've ever seen it. Dutchess County, home of FDR, has always been very Republican, but it may not be after this year.

So, imagine how good prospects would look for Democrats if Bush and Bernanke allowed a real recession to happen. What you are seeing now, with the Fed taking more strenuous action than it ever has, is an attempt to minimize the damage.

I don't think Bernanke has even considered the longer-term consequences, but I hope others are: stagflation has only been stopped by a true recession; nothing else worked in the '70's: Nixon even attempted price controls. Japan was in stagflation for over a decade.

Unfortunately, we live in a market economy, which means: when demand and supply get out of synch, something unpleasant has to happen before the economy can right itself. We have not left the market cycle behind.

Therefore, my recommendation to the next administration (led by Obama, I hope): provide relief to the homeowners who are losing, or are in danger of losing their homes, but don't give another dime to the financial system, until it submits to widespread government regulation. The reason for the sub-prime debacle, the dot.com crash, Enron, World.com, the S&L scandal and so on, is the repeal (or absence) of regulatory frameworks like Glass-Steagal, which kept banks honest.

The next administration should allow the recession to happen, while providing relief to the people who are hurt by it, not the institutions that caused this mess. It should lean on the Fed to raise interest rates. Yes, the stock market will fall. The government can act to shield ordinary people from the worst of the pain, but the speculators who brought us this debacle should not get "golden parachutes."

Only the wealthy were helped in the Roman Empire: the parachutes were real gold, but everyone else was allowed to starve. Gold didn't save the Senators; they betrayed the Empire when Rome fell, instead of buying off the mutinying barbarian army.Then the barbarians carried off the gold.

3/26/08 Recession or Stagflation?

Which would you choose: recession or stagflation?

Recessions are usually a year or two of negative growth in the economy, high unemployment and low investment. Everyone has to tighten their belts; the wealthy have to curb their appetite for luxury goods, but the poor get it in the teeth; they are the ones laid off, or unable to get a job, or pay for adequate shelter and food.

Stagflation, at first glance, seems preferable. Everyone has to pay more for everything, jobs are hard to come by, but the bottom hasn't fallen out. Growth may actually come to a standstill, or inch ahead slowly. Inflation may take a big bite out of everyone's income, rich and poor, but it's the poor who won't be able to keep up--to pay gas for commuting costs, for prescription drugs, food, or to find scarce jobs.

On the other hand, there is only one clear exit from stagflation: a sharp recession, sharp enough that falling demand wrings out inflation, or at least those components of inflation not driven by endemically short supply. I doubt we'll ever see 25 cent, or even $2 gas again, because world demand for oil will continue to rise rapidly, recession or not, and supply is stagnant or falling (probably the latter: we're close to peak oil).

Reagan, or Volker, drove us into recession in 1980 in response to stagflation. When we came out of recession in 1982, we had very low inflation, an improvement over the 10-12% we had reached before it.

Stagflation is really where we're headed now. Inflation is growing, commodity prices are rising fast, and the dollar continues to fall. The falling dollar adds inflationary pressure to imported goods, especially oil and everything produced with it domestically.

The Fed appears to have opted for stagflation: cutting interest rates, opening lending windows, bailing out of Bear Stearns, these are easy money policies; they may slow the economy's slide, but these actions also feed inflation, draining demand from the economy and preventing real growth. They are destroying international confidence in the dollar, which has cushioned our reckless extravagance in a huge military. The tax rebates passed by Congress will at least get some money to the people who need it, but they will also drive more inflation.

Stagflation may have been endemic in the late Roman Empire; only the wealthy continued to accumulate wealth, but they didn't spend much; the currency became worthless, except for gold. The government did nothing; stagnation led to decline.

A sharp recession now might wring out inflation and stagnation; otherwise stagflation could go on for decades, as it recently did in Japan.

3/24/08 China, Foreign Influence and Sports

Canada's Conservative government twisted the record on Obama and Clinton, but more perennial are the claims that Israel wields influence in the US, overtly and covertly. China also manages both overt and covert influence, now more noticeable because of the Olympics.

China is our largest creditor, and the workshop where most of our goods are made, so it holds considerable overt leverage. It also wields surreptitious influence that goes well beyond its official, rather ineffective propaganda. Americans rarely believe what Chinese sources report, if they are contradicted by western sources, yet most information about China is only official.

However, Chinese hackers are now being used to attack anti-Chinese groups in the US. It's been known for awhile that they target US defense contractors and the military; they have even been successful, occasionally, at breaching military security. An anti-Chinese pro-Tibet group was lucky to use Apple servers, and was therefore less vulnerable to viral attacks, but other groups were not so lucky. Some of the Chinese viruses were so specifically targeted that Internet security firms didn't recognize them; they were undetectable, and they allowed the senders to monitor what was on the computer that received them, including passwords. Or to crash the network.

At the moment, Chinese hackers are trying to sabotage Tibetan advocacy groups, as well as monitoring their internal emails so they can counter them politically.

What else might unknown hackers (Israeli, French, Iranian, al qaeda, Russian, etc.) be doing to control the information we get about their parts of the world? Or insuring that the information we get is largely favorable to them? Did you ever think of hackers as soldiers in a war of information?

In the fourth century, in their information war, Romans had panegyrists, both professionals and political opportunists, who presented only the most inflated views of their clients, or the powerful officials they wanted to flatter. There were foreign spies, but many fewer than the government had spying on Romans. Is the US emulating Rome, here? There were also rumor-mongers; they were used by political intriguers, both Roman and foreign, like our political tricks, Fox News and the Korean-owned Washington Times.

But the Chinese--and maybe other countries--are beginning to do to the US what the CIA tries to do elsewhere--intervene in internal politics, not just by lobbying, bribes, or spying, but now by manipulating and blocking information, and by covert internet monitoring of a vast array of American groups.

If the Tibet story goes away, and the Olympics are not boycotted, China may have won their battle without most people knowing why.

3/20/08 Costs (and Profits) of War

The US has been in Iraq for five years, so a whole spate of new assessments of the costs of this war has emerged: in people, dollars, and the global environment. Figures vary: 4,000 Americans killed, 20-50,000 wounded (variations based upon how wounded is defined) and 30,000 to 1.5 million Iraqis killed (depending upon how war-caused deaths are defined).

Dollar costs range from $400 billion to three trillion dollars, again depending upon whether you add up the funds allocated for Iraq (and which ones you leave out), or whether you find the other costs, indirect costs, the costs of health care for the next 30 years for injured vets, the interest costs, and the costs to the US and world economies. There are also war costs to the environment: the CO2 emitted from fuel and munitions, plus the alternative investments and technologies we forego by putting $100's of billions into the Iraq sinkhole.

All are very good reasons why the US needs to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible, in addition to the obvious one: the US doesn't belong there.

We need more than good reasons.

The mass media support the war, or at least don't support getting out. So do the military forces (significant parts of the officer-corps); the defense industry; and the politicians who are indebted to it for creating jobs for their constituents (in nearly every Congressional district) and for campaign funds defense industries give them.

We spend more on "defense" than the rest of the world combined plus $150 billion. Big Media depends upon, and in some cases, like GE, is owned by the defense industry. And the defense industry is absolutely dependent upon those hundreds of billions of defense dollars.

How do you beat these powerful interests? They control more money than any but the government itself?

There is only one way. Mobilize politically against this war and for a green society.

Contrast either Clinton, or Obama, with McCain on the war: McCain wants more wars, as well as insisting we could stay in Iraq for 100 years. Both Obama and Clinton are committed to getting us out, Obama somewhat more persuasively. Both are vague on how long it will take.

On green energy and society, both Clinton and Obama have excellent records, while for McCain corporations rule, especially oil and coal.

Americans need to campaign for Democrats committed to getting out of Iraq, because the US should follow Britain's example, not Rome's; it should withdraw gracefully, not hold onto empire until it's bankrupted. The US gets nearer to insolvency every day it remains.

3/14/08 McCain: TR or Caesar Wannabe

People may think McCain is a moderate. I said he came across as a puppet (Puppet's Puppet, below); I was wrong. McCain's hero is TR, as in the TR of San Juan Hill. If he had a classical education, which he doesn't, McCain's hero would be Caesar.

Not only is he no moderate; he's not even just a run of the mill conservative; he's a radical when it comes to foreign, i.e. imperial, policy. He makes GW look like a wimp. He has not only said we could be in Iraq for a 100 years, he's told people, "I'm sorry my friends, but there's going to be more wars." The reason he knows, is that he's going to start them: with Iran, in Pakistan, in the Philippines, perhaps, or maybe Saudi Arabia, or Somalia. Generally, his focus is on the Middle East, a crusade against "Islamic Extremism" (yes, he's used the word "crusade," too).

He's also talked about the crazies in Latin America. Well, yes, according to McCainian standards, not only Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador, but Argentina and Chile, and of course Nicaragua, will have to be taken care of. And he's been confrontational with Russia, saying that NATO should expand right up to the Russian border and should insure that its new missile defense system, to be established in Eastern Europe, would guard not only against Iran, but against Russia, as well. Bush has tried, ineffectively, to disarm Russia's distrust; McCain feeds it. He also wants to drive Russia out of the Group of Eight.

McCain would also like to establish a new military institution: one designed specifically to fight terror--wherever it is. You can bet it wouldn't be constrained against waging battles within the US, either. It would be like the OSS, which was the untamed and out of control antecedent of the CIA in World War II.

Why is all this necessary? Because the US and similar "good guys" (remarkably few now) have to fight off "Islamic Extremism," or maybe just "extremism" Islamic, or Latino, or Russian, or whatever, worldwide.

After all, terror is a tactic (a repellent one), not a country, a group, or a religion. If you're going to fight "Terror," that could take you all over the world.

Can the US really afford military adventurism far more aggressive than Bush-Cheney? The US can't afford the two minor wars/occupations we're engaged in now. Just look at the dollar!

Are we going to plunder the world's resources, like the Romans, to enrich ourselves? No, to enrich our corporations. If McCain is in charge there are ways around the rules of war prohibiting plunder, but only the very wealthy would profit--if the US doesn't go bankrupt first.

It's likely that it would.

3/11/08 Governor Spitzer and Sexual Repression

Maybe the headline says it all. Governor Spitzer presented himself as squeaky clean, even down to the invariable white shirt he always wore; he couldn't even bring himself to wear a blue one. He also came across as a prude, reacting with discomfort when others told dirty jokes.

And yet, Elliott Spitzer, onetime referred to as the "Elliot Ness of Wall Street," for his determined pursuit of "wrong-doers," could be paired with the late Roman Emperor, Valentinian III, whose sexual exploits were the yeast that led to his assassination. Valentinian dallied with, among others, the beautiful wife of Senator Maximus.

Elliott's downfall won't lead to the serious consequences of Valentinian's amours. Emperor Valentinian III, the last Theodosian Emperor, had no competent Lieutenant Emperor to take over when he was stabbed to death in 455; he was killed by Senator Maximus's men. Senator Maximus succeeded him--only to be torn apart by a mob a few months later. Any semblance of Imperial political continuity had been irretrievably lost.

But there is a common thread here: it is sexual repression generated by religious mores. In the case of Valentinian, the Church had become dominant in Roman life in the preceding two generations, and was attempting to enforce much stricter sexual mores than had previously prevailed. Valentinian, the spoiled heir, rebelled against it and apparently couldn't help himself.

Apparently Elliott couldn’t help himself, either; he was a frequent client of the ironically named "Emperor's Club." Spitzer's profile in the New Yorker several months ago fairly screamed that something was wrong underneath: he seemed too clean--from those white shirts on down--his formulaic judgment of wrong-doers, his do-gooder ethos, his lack of ease with people, his distaste for dirty jokes, his tendency towards Old Testament-style condemnations and his hortatory bombast.

Like the Church-driven ethics of the fifth century, America's public sexual mores creates huge psychological wounds. Denial of sexuality has led to the seemingly un-ending scandals of Catholic priests abusing minors, to Governors revealing affairs with men, to Congressmen revealed in men's rest-rooms, or strip clubs and now to this. In France it would be a very minor scandal: there, men have always been known to dally; in Holland it would have been legal. What makes it even worse: Spitzer, as New York's Attorney General, went after prostitution rings just like the one he apparently patronized.

So, it looks as if New York State may get its first African-American governor, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson. May he get off to a better start than his predecessor, or to Valentinian's successor!

Perhaps New York should go Nevada one better: it should de-criminalize prostitution and stop this idiocy.

3/06/08 McCain: Puppet of a Puppet

Did you see McCain being endorsed by Bush? At the brief press conference it was noticeable that McCain came across as a fumbling dimwit compared to Bush! Compared to Bush! He looked old and disoriented, while Bush asked for questions and fielded most of the answers. Further, Bush looked young and vigorous compared to McCain, and his suit emphasized shoulders that seemed about twice as wide as those of his putative successor's. Bush seemed to be having the time of his life, jigging for the reporters while they waited for the late-running John McCain, and then all but making McCain the butt of his jokes once he arrived.

And Bush made it clear: neither he nor McCain are for change: not on health care, not on the war, not on low taxes for the rich, not on subsidizing big oil, nor on anything else. Bush emphasized: McCain is for more of the same. An Obama ad calls him McSame.

When Bush embraced McCain, it looked as if the president engulfed him, he was so much taller. It was as if Bush were Emperor Theodosius handing over his charge of the western empire to his inoffensive, slow-witted son, Honorius. Bush even joked that McCain better be careful when he names the chair of his VP search committee; Cheney chaired his, the puppet-master ever since. In the case of Theodosius and Honorius, the man the father left in charge of the son was the half-Vandal general Stilicho, who probably conspired with Alaric, the Goth; Alaric later sacked Rome.

Stilicho was beheaded before the sack, but Honorius (392-423) never did rule on his own; he preferred to tend his prize roosters. The western empire lasted 53 years after Honorius' death, but the Germanic takeover became inevitable during his reign.

As for McCain, how much Democratic bombardment will it take before people realize: his campaign has been run by lobbyists, his liaison in Washington is a lobbyist, and he has been on the receiving end of their largesse for decades? Also, the "straight-talker," as even Romney pointed out, has made so many curious turns, on abortion, taxes, the war, and even torture that his positions would diagram like Celtic knotwork.

If GW is a puppet, McCain is the puppet's puppet.

There are only two reasons why McCain could be elected: if the Democrats end up savaging each other as they did in 1968; they'd cause newly energized voters to stay home. And if negative campaigning and voter purges shave the Democratic margin close. At that point, computer manipulation and old-fashioned ballot-stuffing could make the difference.

3/04/08 Flu, Gold and Oil Rise, Dollar Falls

This has been a bad winter for many, here in the Northeast. At least here we don't have to worry about starvation, as the people of the Fifth Century did, when there was a bad winter. Starvation and plague. My theory of why Attila turned back from Rome in summer was also because of starvation and plague, not the wagging finger of a Pope whose authority had no meaning for him.

We have the plague, here. Not literally, thanks to vaccines and public health--not yet completely dismantled by the privatizers. It's the failure, apparently, of the flu vaccine to protect us against one form of the flu that came out of East Asia too late for the vaccine cookers to catch that spread the flu this year. It isn't a killer, I think, but it's lingered on in me, has circled around our community and is well-known in the local clinic.

This failure makes you realize, how relatively lucky we are, how many other real plagues have been abolished or banished through vaccines and public health measures. Still, people like my 95 year old mother are probably at risk, and people try not to infect her.

But there is lot of bad news out there as well. Oil hitting $104, gold poised for $1000, the wars heating up again in Afghanistan and Iraq, Venezuela and Ecuador threatening war with Colombia, and more and more pundits and poobahs admitting that even if some of the traditional markers say it's not yet a recession, it's a recession.

And then, of course, there's the dollar.

For all of the lives of almost anyone reading this (my 95-year old mother doesn't read online), the US dollar has been the premier currency in the world. I remember spending a summer in Europe on little more than a dollar a day. Now the dollar has hit new lows with most major currencies. It takes over three dollars to buy two Euros. Prices in Europe look like dollar prices, or higher.

And yet, since we're facing recession at home, the Fed will probably lower interest rates more, making the dollar even less attractive to currency traders (US and foreign), driving the dollar lower. Theoretically, a lower dollar could revive manufacturing here, but for that to happen, the networks of international production established since Reagan would have to be radically disrupted. In the short-term, prices here will rise, because of higher prices for imports and for imported components. In the long term?

In the long term we will have to get used to the dollar being just another currency and maybe the US being just another country.

2/28/08 Obama in a Turban

Obama in Somali garb (or was it Kenyan?) was a buzz in web-land, and among Ohioans and Texans last week.

Is the picture comparable to the shock and consternation when Julius Caesar dallied with Cleopatra? Romans, a hidebound people, worried Caesar was abandoning Roman ways.

No one did things like that in the later Roman Empire. By the time of Theodosius the Great and Honorius (late 4th and early 5th centuries), foreign influence was pervasive, but Honorius banned "German" trousers from the Imperial court (Emperor and courtiers wore gowns), and foreign ideas, like competing forms of Christianity were criminalized. The ideas were stopped for awhile, but not the foreign influence: Germans took over when the Empire fell; it's why men (and now women) wear trousers now.

In the Ohio debate, Obama did not follow the most obvious defense: politicians have been dressing up in "native garb" at least since Cal Coolidge sported an Indian headdress; he toured Indian tribes in the 1920's. Instead, Obama let the issue go when Clinton denied having anything to do with the picture's distribution during the campaign.

Perhaps the turban and the rest of the outfit came from the Kenyan community of Obama's father, hence Barack's reticence? And yet, it's not as if he's hiding his background, having written a full-length book about it. But there is the buzz about him being a closet Mooslim, and he needs to deal with that head on; the whispers won't go away until he does.

On the other hand, it now comes out that McCain was born in Panama. Does that make him ineligible to be President? The Constitution requires a "natural born" American. Probably not, but it is significant that two of the three likely candidates for President have exotic backgrounds. In the 4th and 5th century some Emperors came from places like the Balkans not Rome, others had German mothers and almost all married children to sons or daughters of German generals.

Yes, the American empire has reached that stage; it is no longer hidebound, no longer just "pure American" (it never was, as a settler society). The fact that McCain is probably the product of Americans serving abroad, and Obama is the result of a foreigner coming here (and then leaving) is but another confirmation of the stage of empire at which we have arrived.

While McCain presses for further expansion, Obama, in effect, campaigns for withdrawal from at least some imperial obligations. Considering where we are historically--in the late empire--graceful withdrawal is appropriate.

Only the British Empire ever accomplished it.

2/25/08 Ralph's Nadir

On his website, Ralph Nader supplies figures that show Gore would have won in Florida if Nader hadn't been running in 2000. Nader pulled in over 97,000 votes. According to polls he cites, 38% would have voted for Gore, 25% for Bush. Arithmetic shows that Gore would have netted 12,664 votes, and since he lost in the official count by 500 and change, Gore would have won.

Nader's position on Gore-Bush in 2000 was "Tweedledee and Tweedledum -they look and act the same, so it doesn't matter which you get." Having seen the effects of Bush's 7 plus years in office, everyone knows, now, how wrong Nader was, but still, Nader, the man more responsible for our 7 year nightmare than anyone but Bush himself, wants to run for President again; he announced his formal candidacy Sunday.

This is his fifth run for the presidency! Maybe he's so used to running every four years, he just can't stand not to run, even though he's two years older (74) than the aged John McCain. But he has a huge ego. Maybe he can't abide the thought that people will be paying attention to Obama or Clinton and McCain--but not to him!

Nader has been professional gadfly, an author of many books, and an organizer of many "public interest" groups, including the national coalition of Public Interest Research Groups or PIRGs. These have served many positive functions in opening up our political spaces.

One thing most people probably don't know about the PIRGs, however, is that some have been strongly anti-union--for themselves. When Calpirg Fund was unionized in LA, management found every excuse to delay negotiating a contract with the Teamsters and fired the union member fundraisers one by one. My daughter was the fourth member remaining when she was fired for trumped up charges. Management closed the office when two were left.

So, Nader is no more squeaky clean than many others, including candidates like Obama, who pushed ethics reform as a Senator. Unlike the major candidates, Nader has never held public office, and never administered a large organization, like Bloomberg. He deserves even fewer votes than the 0.38% he got in 2004.

Are Republicans (or the selfish class) funding Nader to help prevent a populist landslide which could threaten their privileges? It's why Roman Senators connived to overthrow the Roman Empire.

My wife wishes someone would shoot Nader, but it is Obama who is at risk of assassination, not Nader.

NB: Obama should never again agree, as he did in Dallas last week, to let the Secret Service abandon security procedures, even if they slow crowd entry into a large arena: too much is at stake.

2/22/08 Upside to the Downturn (Recession)

Is there an upside?

Some people can make money in a downturn (selling short), but most lose their shirts if they try. You can protect yourself in a downturn by buying gold, but it's already high ($949/oz today). When gold prices go up, things are bad. The Roman Senators of the fifth century hoarded gold; it did preserve their wealth for awhile, as the empire slid downhill. Then it was looted by the barbarians and they didn't have it anymore--if they survived. Gold might not tarnish, but it's easily carried away.

In our downturn, if you own Exxon, don't sell, but don't buy, either. If you own property, you shouldn't sell; if you don't, you shouldn't buy.

One upside could be slower development of good agricultural land. Owners should seriously think about inviting a young farm couple to farm it; they can't afford to buy. Then it would be producing food, instead of foreclosed homes or shopping malls. It's difficult for the farms to return when the land is paved and built over. Food produced closer to population centers, or not shipped across the nation or the world, would reduce our carbon footprint considerably.

Most of all, the upside of this downturn is that it will cause more people to think seriously about how our capitalist system doesn't really make sense. Only growth provides prosperity, but you can't have growth forever; we live on a finite planet and we're already using up more of Earth's resources (including its atmosphere) than can ever be replaced.

Until now, people have seriously not gotten the idea that we're going to have to cut back. For months, supermarkets have sold permanent bags to replace the plastic or paper ones. Plastic bags are so pervasive that Midway Island, in the middle of the Pacific is swamped with them; there they're asphyxiating albatross chicks! And of course they're made with oil. There can't be more than 10% of the people using the permanent bags. Even those who do, drive off in huge SUV's.

A downturn brings people down to earth; it demonstrates that our system is not limitless, and it hurts a lot of people. Maybe people have lived better than ever before, but they can't continue to live the same way. Maybe we have to experience a reverse to be ready to really seriously change our way of life. We will have to--unless it's already too late.

A new, progressive administration led by Obama would only be the first step, but at least it could be in the right direction.

2/20/08 Bush Calls Kettle Black

Our Hero of Democracy, President Bush, enjoins the Kosovars to protect the rights of their minority Serbs. There are some ironies here, although the mainstream press simply reports the "facts."

First of all, Bush made the statement while on a visit to Rwanda, the nation in which the US did not intervene, despite the most horrific genocide, under Clinton's watch; second, the admonition was broadcast to Kosovo, the country in which Clinton did intervene, if only with air power.

Before I go on to the third irony, note the difference here, even under the comparatively more "restrained" regime that preceded our present disaster. Neither Kosovo nor Rwanda had oil, but Kosovars are European, Rwandans are African. No wonder we bombed Serbs, but let Hutus massacre Tutsis!

Okay, third irony: Bush lectures both the Kosovars and the Pakistanis about democracy! Our Hero of Democracy was elected by questionable means the first time. His election the second time, if it wasn't stolen by computer manipulation, was insured by disenfranchising millions of Blacks in places like Florida and Ohio. Talk about minority rights!

And then Bush's democratic practices are beginning to resemble the tragic hero of my novel, Attila (available onsite). Actually, even Attila had to bow to the will of his enraged nobles, sometimes. But Congress has no control over Bush! He's stated as much, and demonstrated it over and over again, by refusing to allow any of his White House appointees to be questioned, in effect ordering them to disobey Congressional subpoenas. He's also said, with every signing statement, that he's not bound by the laws that Congress enacts, that he can disregard them at will.

In the news the same day was a report on wine selling in Morocco, where it's illegal, but widely used. The King's supermarket chain sells some of the wine, but then, he's the King. It would be like Bush selling pot--on a large scale.

Actually, that may not be completely off, either: the US government's behind the scenes role in the drug trade has been going on at least since Vietnam. Which country grows the most opium? Afghanistan--after the Taliban. Which country sells the most cocaine? Columbia, Bush's closest ally in Latin America. Where does most of the imported pot come from? Mexico, another very close ally, and neighbor whose economy we've looted. Either we're in cahoots with the drug cartels, or our influence is so noxious that our close allies have to turn to drugs to survive.

Actually, they're the detritus of an empire: ours. The drug war is only a gesture: it keeps the social conservatives and the liquor industry happy.

2/13/08 Populism and US Primaries

Is Huckabee a populist? Is Ron Paul? Is Obama?

Populism means going to the people as opposed to the powers-that-be. All the above candidates claim to be populists.

Bush, in 2000, claimed to be a "compassionate conservative." He was radical, not populist, in bringing about fundamental changes: to the conception of the Presidency as a virtually unchecked executive; to pursuing pre-emptive war, rather than war as last resort; by up-ending the progressive tax system, undoing protections for citizens and in many other areas.

Ron Paul is a populist in his call for the abolition of the IRS and the Federal Reserve, his support for a return to the gold standard, as well as in his call to bring the troops home now. Huckabee is a populist in his perception of church and state, and in his advocacy of the "Fair Tax," replacing the income tax with a national sales tax.

Is Obama a populist? In the positions he has taken in the campaign he is not populist like Paul or Huckabee. His healthcare program is slightly more centrist than Clinton's, while his advocacy for withdrawal from Iraq is pretty close to the mainstream, cautious and incremental. His position on diplomacy: negotiate directly with perceived enemies, is certainly a refreshing change; it could have dramatic effects.

However, Obama's political style is more populist because he has mobilized large numbers of people who have never participated in an election campaign before, and he claims he will listen to them, that he prefers bottom-up organizing to top-down politics. Openness to ordinary people, to their concerns and ideas, to suggestions, to independent action (like the youtube videos) is a significant departure.

Considering that the "moderate" politics of McCain or Clinton would probably perpetuate the building of Bush's Security State, while Obama's bottom-up mobilization would challenge it, populism would be a good thing. Major new approaches to defense, energy, the environment, education, citizens' rights and more would also be welcome; they would be more likely with a mobilized electorate than with one lulled by the mantra that change is just a fairy tale, all smoke and mirrors, or, as McCain repeated numbingly in his post-Potomac primary speech, change is just "a platitude."

When Emperor Majorian donned the purple in 457, major change was needed to undo the Roman Empire's centuries of decline. Majorian attempted changes, but he was no Obama. His reforms threatened the powers-that-be, so he was eliminated by the army in 461; few protested; his popularity was only skin deep.

2/11/08 Nader, Third Parties and Pagans

What do third parties, Nader and the Pagans of fourth century Rome have in common?

Since 1860 the US has been blessed/cursed with two parties competing for power. Parties have come and gone, but since the Republicans replaced the Whigs in 1860, no third party has gotten near to national power.

In Rome, in 392, Symmachus, a great orator, pleaded with the Emperor to restore the altar of the Winged Victory to the Senate: the Emperor praised Symmachus for his oratory, arrested him, and had him released at the 100th mile post from Rome. Only Christians competed for power afterwards; sons of Pagans became Bishops.

Third parties in the US have played important roles: in 1964 I heard Norman Thomas, past Socialist Party presidential nominee (1930's and 40's), boast that every plank of his 1932 platform was now law. Democrats in the New Deal, Fair Deal and New Frontier had enacted them. Third parties try out ideas and platforms like single payer, women's suffrage and Prohibition. Some good ideas, some bad: all have to be stolen by one of the two major parties before they can be enacted.

Face it: Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader have about as good a chance of winning the Presidency as I have.

Unlike the Pagans in Rome, however, third parties can have a paradoxical effect in close elections. Nader, despite his "not a dime's worth of difference" line, had much more in common with Gore than with Bush. It is likely that his small percentage of votes enabled Bush to steal the election: Nader made the election much closer than it would have been. Liberal/leftwing voters, voting a majority of votes cast, ended up by default, electing Bush, certainly more than "a dime's worth of difference" from Gore. Gore would not have invaded Iraq, would have joined the Kyoto Protocol and would not have cut taxes for the wealthy, just for starters. Nader in 2008 should bury his ego and forgettaboutit.

And yet no one for democracy can be against third parties. What I argue for is instrumental voting and strategic campaigning. Third parties have no chance of winning power in the US: therefore they should refrain from campaigning strongly in states where the two parties are separated by small margins--unless they want to defeat the party closer to their ideals and preferences. In a state such as New York or Massachusetts a Green Party campaign might make some sense: unless the campaign changes minds utterly, New York and Massachusetts will vote heavily Democratic in November. But in close states like Ohio, or Florida, I hope Nader or McKinney will stay away.

2/7/08 Oops, Gotta Support the Troops!

If Bush gets his way on Defense (likely), the military will not only spend more than all of the rest of the world combined, but more (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than the US did in World War II.

In WWII, the US fought in Western Europe, North Africa, the Pacific and Asia, simultaneously. Today the US is waging two Occupations in two medium-sized countries in one region, so why does the US spend so much on Defense?

The Defense "establishment" is wildly effective institutionally, much more effective than any other political machine ever was. Political machines persist because they meet peoples' needs: integration of newcomers, mobility, accessibility to power, and predictability. The Military is the most integrated institution in America; even in 1961 my platoon sergeant was a black Jehovah's Witness; he shouted "Jesus loves you!" instead of cursing.

The military integrates minorities and immigrants and provides a huge market for defense industries and contractors--getting ever larger under Bush's privatization.

Back when the USSR collapsed, people spoke of a "peace dividend," since Defense had been built for the Cold War. It didn't happen.

Defense discovered the War On Terror (war-on-terra), although terror is not effectively fought with conventional forces, as we are now seeing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Counter-terrorism does not require the fancy hardware that defense industries churn out, like the F-111 fighter; it requires special forces, undercover and police work, intelligence, and political work, diplomacy and targeted aid.

So, why does the Pentagon dominate the war-on-terra?

It's the most powerful institution in the US, just like the Roman legions in their Empire.

Defense industries place plants in virtually every Congressional district; Congressmen and Senators advocate for them, for jobs. Therefore, jobs and programs are difficult to cut, regardless of their effectiveness. High school grads with no prospects go into the services; immigrants too. And large corporations make billions from Defense and give millions in campaign funds.

That's why America spends so much on defense. It's not spending it on the war-on-terra, nor most of it on its two wars, either, but those wars are creating more terrorists--a good way to perpetuate the system, but a danger to Americans and to the world.

Before the US can de-fund defense to spend more on an effective, non-military war-on-terra, and more on domestic and world needs, political leaders should establish institutions to replace needs fulfilled by the defense establishment: jobs, markets, and political influence. How about a corps to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure and schools and to retrofit US homes and businesses with alternative energy and energy conservation--in every congressional district?

Domestic corps would enrich, not bankrupt the nation.

1/31/08 Onward to Pakistan!

I don't think even Bush is stupid enough to invade Pakistan, but it must be very frustrating for him. There, within Pakistan's borders, is a resurgent al Qaeda replete with training camps, just like the ones they had in Afghanistan, and they're supported by the Pakistani Taliban. Now there are two Talibans, and of course they cooperate--to retake Afghanistan, and to expand into Pakistan, respectively.

The Pakistani Taliban and allies are clearly on the move. They've been beaten back from most of the Swat valley, and were massacred when they tried to hold the Red Mosque in Islamabad in 2007, but a year before they would never have attempted such aggression.

The Pakistani Armed Forces are having no easy time of it. They've lost over 1100 soldiers, and they admit they don't know much about counter-terrorism. They're trained to fight against much bigger India, after all, and they were only decisively defeated once: losing Bangladesh.

It is a proud, post-British-colonial military. Pakistan is also a post-colonial state; the people struggled for independence from the British. Consequently, there are some things Pakistan will not do, like invite American soldiers to help fight extremists.

That's why Bush and Cheney are frustrated. They can't afford to invade Pakistan. It has The Bomb, and there are 164 million Pakistanis. An invasion is precisely the kind of conflict the Pakistani armed forces are equipped to fight.

So, the US tries to insinuate itself into Pakistan. But Pakistanis are wary of the US. The US offers training, or joint operations, but so far the Pakistanis have not agreed. Musharraf knows he'd be overthrown if he was seen as giving in to the US. And yet, the US has supported him from the start. Very frustrating.

And dangerous. But aside from a covert strike at bin Laden--if the US finds him--there's really little the US can do directly. Or should do. Even training can escalate to much more (See Vietnam).

This is what comes of supporting a military dictator (with $10 billion in aid) and making only minor demurrals when he continually suppresses democracy. What other outlets do the frustrated Pakistanis have than Muslim extremism? We make it easy for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The best defense against extremists is to use aid as leverage to force the vulnerable Musharraf to hold free and fair elections that will truly return democracy to Pakistan. (It has a legacy of democracy and the rule of law, unlike Iraq.)

The US must insist that most American aid go to the poorest, not to the military. The poor have seen no rise in their standard of living for years.

1/24/08 Bush's Back-door Treaty with Iraq

A "Declaration of Principles" between Bush and Iraqi PM, Maliki, commits the US to "Supporting the Republic of Iraq in defending its democratic system against internal and external threats." Emphasis mine.

President Bush with less than a year left as President, is attempting to tie the hands of the incoming President.

The above statement was announced between the US and Iraq on Nov. 26, 2007. On January 24th, Congressman Delahunt put the White House on notice that "Congress must be an integral part of discussions and negotiations." Delahunt has held subcommittee hearings on whether such guarantees must be contained in a formal treaty.

Senators Clinton, Obama, Biden and others have opposed the agreement. Biden questioned how the US can make a commitment when "there is no way of measuring whether that country is likely to have a functioning government."

It would be impossible for Bush to get a two-thirds vote of approval in the Senate, which is why he and Maliki are pursuing this as if it were simply a status of forces agreement; they argue that a treaty is unnecessary.

While the US has made commitments to scores of countries through Executive Agreements signed by Presidents and heads of state, none commit the US to defend them from internal threats; treaties are customarily needed to commit the US to defend another country against external enemies. The statement of principles goes far beyond a simple status of forces, but then Bush, typically, does not feel constrained by mere Constitutional niceties; he wants an agreement by mid-year, before the UN mandate expires.

There is also an Iraqi side to this: While the Iraqi parliament is on record demanding US withdrawal within two years, Nouri al Maliki wants to cling to power, and probably sees this agreement as a way to increase his chances--by getting Bush to commit to propping up his government indefinitely. Maliki probably hopes Bush can tie the hands of succeeding presidents to do likewise. It could guarantee that the US would be involved in Iraq's civil war for decades. McCain said "100 years."

It was not just the Roman Empire that went bankrupt because it over-extended. The empires of Spain, France and the USSR did also. Rome forestalled the inevitable by hiring barbarian armies; with the US it's "military contractors."

Will the US, through Halliburton and Blackwater, still occupy Iraq in 2103?

The US Senate should prevent Bush's attempt to control US-Iraq policy after the end of his term. The Senate must go on record as opposing the President's back-door treaty.

Maybe then Iraqis will get serious about settling their simmering civil war.

1/23/08 Recession or Depression?

The sub-prime meltdown has triggered something much bigger, but it makes sense to look at what created it. Banks were greedy, selling mortgages to people who couldn't afford traditional mortgages, and then, because of the high returns of the sub-prime rates, to others who could, like minority borrowers with better credit. And, through "balloon payments" and other creative tricks, banks made these instruments appear affordable.

Banks then sold these deceptive mortgages as financial assets, hence the world-wide impact of their collapse: from Peoria to Scotland, to Tokyo. Banks could do this because they were no longer much regulated.

The whole mess demonstrates the destructiveness of The Selfish Class, which corners wealth and resists responsibility (e-book available on this website). It also illustrates why the US should not have jettisoned what it learned in the Great Depression.

The recession (or depression) is not just because of the mortgage mess; that was its trigger. The whole expansion since 2001 has been very unequally shared; inequality has escalated, exacerbated by Bush-Cheney tax policies, crony government and war. As a consequence, US consumption, which seems to sustain the world economy, was maintained only by rising personal debt. Booming home prices extended the binge, since consumers could borrow against increasing home equity. But no more.

Global economic growth depended on US consumption, but the rate is unsustainable; the proceeds of growth have gone largely to a very small US and global elite. Cutting interest rates might energize business and stock markets, but it will not create much new demand; tax rebates, extended unemployment benefits, etc. will be only temporary stimuli. What is needed: the money that people earn through greater productivity must go into their pockets, not just investors' portfolios; that will help re-energize the mass market.

You do this through tax policies and through encouraging labor unions--and moral suasion.

The US is also massively in debt to the rest of the world. Interest rate cuts will exacerbate this, since cuts cheapen the dollar further, and, besides imports, US production has been internationalized. Corporations import materials, fuel, parts, sub-assemblies and services, even for goods "made-in-America." US exports will earn more, and sell more, but US dependence on imports is difficult to overcome, especially given our growing dependence on imported oil.

The economic problems are a result of unrestrained global capitalism promoted by the global elite pushing their own short-term interests. Next year's President should use the bully pulpit to bring a return to regulation of business, and the encouragement of labor unions to begin to restore balance to the political/economic system.

1/19/08 Steal This Election

Kenya's recent flawed election is a case in point: the official count was likely rigged; also in Mexico last year. Protests against election fraud were violent, or massive--but not in the US.

The US has experienced election frauds in the past (2000 and 2004), and perhaps as recently as the NH primary: computer manipulation (of opti-scan counts of ballots) is more sophisticated than Kenya's fraud.

In the US, "caging lists" were used by Republicans to exclude thousands, perhaps millions of voters before elections: the pretext? Prevent voter fraud. Greg Palast claims these efforts were crucial to the 2004 win by Bush. He says the criterion for voting roll exclusion was simple: "voting while black," although other rationales were offered: some were felons, or with similar names, some were serving in Iraq and couldn't return the respond-do-not-forward voting registrar queries; there were many other reasons. Voter ID laws would have similar results.

Voter fraud claims are intended to suppress the number of votes from targeted communities, mostly minorities, including immigrants. The expectation among Republicans: these are overwhelmingly Democratic votes.

Democrats are not above voter suppression, either. Palast makes a case that Bush carried New Mexico in 2004 because Bill Richardson, Democratic governor, suppressed turnout among Native Americans supporting his rivals within the state party. Hillary Clinton's campaign also tried voter suppression when attempting to stop caucuses from meeting in casinos in Las Vegas.

The array of tricks (dirty and non) used to suppress voting is legion: negative advertising, which suppresses turnout; false notices advising voters to vote on a different day, or warning them that voting could risk felony charges, or deportation; providing fewer, older machines in minority precincts (remember the long lines reported in Cleveland in 2004? There were none in the white suburbs). Breakdowns and an inadequate number of machines probably reduced turnout; it was later revealed that the mis-match of machines to registered voters was intended by Ohio's Secretary of State.

Michael Baisden, talk radio host, has worked tirelessly to boost turnout among his mostly black audience. Since he's syndicated in 56 major cities, five days a week, his influence is important, which was underscored when Bill Clinton called him back, on air, to respond to Baisden's questions.

However, Baisden needs to address the attempts to suppress turnout, the de-registration drives, the dirty tricks, if he wants African-Americans to turn out to vote in sufficient numbers to count. Voter suppression should be everyone's concern.

In 5th century Rome, only Senators had the vote.

1/17/08 When Intel Agencies Take Power

"Pakistan would certainly be better off if the ISI were never used for domestic political purposes," said a former C.I.A. Islamabad station chief.

It turns out, according to a New York Times article, that Pakistan's intelligence agency, equivalent to the US CIA, has been playing a complicated game--and now it's blow-back time.

ISI, or parts of it, have been supporting the Taliban, al Qaeda and other militants in the parts of Pakistan bordering on Afghanistan and India. They have used them to de-stabilize Afghanistan, and maintain influence there, and to keep India on the defensive in Kashmir. They encouraged them in their Islamic militancy.

The ironic thing is that it was the US's CIA that realized it could use the slogan the Muslim League used to create Pakistan, "Islam in danger!" to ignite militants against the Soviets back in the 1980's. The ISI, or some of the higher ups in the Services, have been using the same strategy since for Pakistan's interests, as they perceive them.

Blow-back time? An early use of the term 'blow-back' was when the Iranian revolution demonstrated that the CIA's "successful" intervention in the 1950's now had terrible consequences. Iran might have had a parliamentary system; instead it got the Shah and then Khomeini.

Then there was the blow-back of Taliban Afghanistan, allied with al Qaeda, groups that ISI and the CIA had both supported in the Afghan-Soviet war.

But people within the ISI continued this same strategy, even after the disaster of a Taliban-al Qaeda controlled Afghanistan and 9-11.

Now, al Qaeda-allied militants fight in large parts of Pakistan, and the Pakistani Army is unable to control them: blow-back big-time.

Covert intelligence is as much an oxymoron as military intelligence. Agents must see nothing except what is right in front of their faces; they have no time to think; they react.

It appears that the ISI is not really under the government's control, but then the CIA has demonstrated similar independence as in the torture video erasures.

Secret police may have controlled, behind the scenes, in the late Roman Empire, but not out front. The NKVD took power under Stalin. The danger of secret police--the CIA and the ISI fit most of the definitions for secret police--is that they can amass immense power behind the scenes. Stalin realized this, and used the NKVD to create the most totalitarian regime that ever existed up until that time.

Given the advances in surveillance technology, a Stalinist takeover anywhere now would be much more effective, and oppressive, than in Stalin's wildest dreams.

That's why political control of the CIA and ISI is so necessary; intelligence should be used for information, never for policy.

1/16/08 The Price of Human Flesh

In 410, in the Roman Colosseum, thousands of Romans, starving because of the seige by the Empire against the occupying Goths, chanted: "Set a price on human flesh!" Horrible to think of: they meant that slaves should be killed for meat.

The US military is very humane by comparison, but it does set a price on human flesh, or at least on a life. By US insurance standards it's absurdly low.

But if you begin to think about the Iraq Occupation in terms of the price the US really owes in compensation for damages rendered, then these figures, seemingly generous by Iraqi standards, are insignificant.

I've written an article on this that's accessible at the permalink. "Give 'em $150 for a sheep."

Note on notes below: sorry, folks my comments page is acting up, but on one of these notes I add some material on a long ago blog: Congress D+, and one is a reader's comment on my blog on Male Enhancement as a paradigm.

As for a page for comments that can be used for a true interchange, I'm still working on it.

1/11/08 Why Bloomberg Might Run

It begins to look as if the New Hampshire primary tallies were manipulated; Bloomberg's revived interest in the election is therefore serendipitous.

Do you wonder if he could really buy the election? With his money he can create image and apparent substance, can manufacture himself as businessman savior, who will cut through all the partisan bickering and get us out of this mess. He could buy the programmers to insure his plurality in election counts. Then, with his money, he could buy Congress, or rather, most of the House and Senate. He could also promise to pay them off more, once he was in office; he'd pay them with our money, of course.

But who, really, would Bloomberg represent? The people he persuades to vote for him through sophisticated advertising and clever packaging? Certainly, he doesn't owe anything to other businesses--or does he?

Bloomberg could completely self-fund his campaign, and therefore claim that he was even cleaner than those Democrats who claim they don't get funds from lobbyists. On the other hand, Bloomberg's fortune is dependent on the whole world of big business. Since he can buy people, his interests are not in particular constituencies; people are fungible. He talks about getting a million volunteers, but ironically, it costs a lot of money to get them. If he spends enough, he can get a million volunteers.

A couple of alternatives if Bloomberg ran.

If he ran against Hillary and McCain, he could cast himself as the man of reason and wisdom, untainted by special interests, incorruptible. And he would claim he was the most experienced running a great enterprise, and a government.

If he ran against Obama and Romney, he would contrast himself to Obama's inexperience, warn people that they would be jumping off into the unknown with Obama, while he'd contrast his social liberalism with the brash Romney, who has switched his politics from liberal to conservative.

Bloomberg doesn't have to flip-flop; he just has to decide what positions will sell best with the American people. But he won't create a mandate; he would be in a three-way race, in the "center."

Now, you have to ask: why would Bloomberg run, or want to be President?

The unrest, dissatisfaction, maybe looming disasters, could mean a revolution. With $11.5 billion assets, at a minimum, Bloomberg could lose a lot even with peaceful reform. Talk of "Change" has stirred the electorate. It looks, from the turnouts in Iowa and New Hampshire that this is going to be a Democratic year--unless Bloomberg intervenes: our Maximus.

Maximus, wealthiest Senator in 454, bought the Emperor's assassination, then crowned himself; he was ripped apart six months later.

See entry below for more on Maximus.

1/10/08 Can Bloomberg Buy Presidency?

"You and I surprised a lot of people tonight." That's what Hillary wrote to me--and millions of others--after New Hampshire. She thanked me--for nothing I did, as far as I can remember, except read her emails.

And then she asked me to contribute.

Meanwhile, Obama, after his loss in NH, got key union endorsements in Nevada: the union workers in the casinos, a significant force in the next primary.

But Mayor Bloomberg, it turns out, is seriously considering an independent run for president: he's worth $11.5 billion, maybe $23 billion, and he's collecting data on you and me, buying the huge amount of commercial information available everywhere about every one of us.

Mayor Bloomberg is the perfect reincarnation of the 5th century Roman Senator Maximus, Emperor for about six months--until he was literally torn apart by the mob. Senators then were like billionaires today; they bought and sold offices; they made fortunes bleeding the Roman Empire.

Why would Americans vote for someone worth $11.5 billion--or $23 billion? Do they really think he'd have their interests at heart? Think about how much less he'd have if he fairly distributed his earnings to the people who built his wealth.

Mayor Bloomberg sees the possibility of running because of "uncertainty" in the nominating process in both parties.

If Clinton continues to win and Obama fades, will Bloomberg be more, or less likely to run? Or, if Obama recovers and wins, and gains more than half of super-Tuesday, will Bloomberg run then?

Could Bloomberg buy the Presidency? Wow, the ultimate triumph of Capitalism!

I'm disappointed Obama lost NH; I'm also worried. People may have voted for Hillary because they couldn’t vote for a black man for president, no matter how attracted they are to him and his populist politics, saying they'd vote for him, but didn't. Pollsters know this as the "Bradley/Wilder effect."

I hope Hillary won because women were mobilized by her tears.

If Bloomberg enters, it's because he thinks he can buy the election: don't ask how.

But what does he stand for? He's been a much better mayor than Giuliani, but without his moment of "heroism." He's moderately liberal on social issues--at least he has been in New York, where you have to be--and he's worked with unions and minorities, because you have to, to survive there politically.

But those billions come from many bowed backs all over the empire, just like the Roman Senators of old, who had high minded ideas--for themselves--but made a deal with the Ostrogoths. The Roman Empire fell so Senators could avoid paying taxes. The Dark Ages followed.

What would Bloomberg do?

1/9/08 Bushco: Mobsters or Nazis?

I refer to the way this administration operates. James Hanson, head of the NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, was told that he had to have his remarks cleared with public affairs before he could communicate with the public. This happened after he began talking about global warming and some of the specific things we would have to do to combat it: like declaring a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants.

That was a no-no. He could talk science until he was blue in the face, but Hanson wasn't allowed to talk about practical applications, such as the fossil fuels we shouldn't be burning. He was told, especially, that he shouldn't be speaking about particular economic interests blocking actions to reduce global warming.

Remember "memory holes" in 1984? Hanson discovered that Goddard's mission statement had been changed "in the middle of the night." He had been citing it: "to understand and protect the home planet" in his speeches, but he was told he shouldn't be quoting it anymore; it had been deleted. The statement had been adopted publicly, but was eliminated very quietly.

Another researcher was told in an email: "We are never to refer to the big bang as anything but a theory… It is not NASA's place to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts Intelligent Design by a Creator." Are we returning to the Dark Ages?

Speeches were vetted--and significantly altered--by someone who was not a scientist, and had minimal scientific background: a PR man.

But the clincher of Hanson's interview (Fresh Air, 1/8/08) was his account of how he was apprised of administration positions on what he could and could not say, or publish. They never told him in writing, always in person, by two higher ups, to the lower-level researcher. No records, nothing in writing or even on the phone: the second official as back-up (or muscle)?

Are they mobsters, protecting their clients (oil, coal) with threats? Or are they Nazis, enforcing their ideology with political coercion? Perhaps, they are both: think Dick Cheney. Crony politics means looking out for your guys and their interests--the oil and coal companies, especially. But Bush-co is also ideologically driven. Cheney has to have Fox News on in any hotel room he stays in. He has to have his ideological fix--and reassurance that someone is as crazy as--er, thinks the way he does.

Can't you just see him? Hunched over, a mixture of snarl and frown as he tells his staffer, "We gotta stop that SOB! We sell oil, for godsake! He works for us! Send over what's-his-name. Shut him up, goddamit!"

1/6/08 Obama and "Words"

"…words do inspire, words do help people get involved, words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health-care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy.

Don't discount that power." Barack Obama, 1/5/08

The last time we had a President who inspired the American people was in 1980, when Reagan changed the political agenda. Before that it was JFK in 1960. The greatest example of that kind of power was manifested by FDR. Remember: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Bill Clinton might have been able to use the power of words, but he never did; he did not change the conversation, the political agenda; he left the conservative "consensus" (the one established by Reagan) pretty much intact. That, really, was his failure, despite his political genius.

The argument on Saturday, January 5th, between Obama and Edwards on one side and Hillary on the other was really about the moral power a President can wield. It might be true that Hillary knows marginally more about the nitty-gritty of "getting things done," but her approach and her arguments hark back to the Clinton administration, which ultimately failed because it did not change the agenda. Technical knowledge of the legislative process will not change minds.

If the US is ever going to emerge from the downward spiral Reagan set in motion, one this website has catalogued for the last several years, it is not going to be with incremental improvements on a bad situation. The US needs a moral leader, one who can exhort, with a calm, reasonable voice, and who can bring people together.

Those are the qualities Obama projected during the January 5th debate and in his victory speech in Iowa the day before.

Bush was unprepared when he took office and has not grown since, in fact he appears to have regressed, but that does not mean that experience is all.

Most of the really great Presidents did not have extensive experience: Lincoln most dramatically (he served one term in the House, and was defeated in his one run for the Senate), but Teddy Roosevelt and JFK were pretty light on experience, and FDR was never in the House or Senate; all of them grew while in office, but they also inspired, with words.

It was notable in the NH debate that Edwards sided with Obama on change; where they differed was on style: Edwards wants to fight "the corporations;" Obama seeks to draw people with him, but his credentials are at least as liberal. Edwards would be polarizing, as would Hillary.

Obama has the potential to be inspirational.

1/5/08 Obama or the KKK: A Paranoid Fantasy

A lot of the political establishment could feel distinctly discomfited by this. A horrible thought: a bullet would solve their problem.

Now, consider that Obama is seen as "Kennedy-esque." We know JFK's fate, and that of MLK and Bobbie, too. In each case they were doing, or trying to do what Obama promises to do: change the politics in Washington: close the monopoly held by lobbies and appeal directly to the people to gain mandates for change, a non-corporate dominated politics.

Couldn't that be seen as particularly threatening to all the crony business that has thrived under Bush-Cheney? But the "well-connected," would be protected by "corporate Democrats" like Schumer, Hoyer, Emmanuel, and, yes, Hillary Clinton.

Consider how effective the different assassinations were in accomplishing the goals of people against political change. JFK's murder actually promoted his agenda with his successor--until the Vietnam War destroyed its promise. Bobbie's murder, on the other hand, occurring just after his California win but before the nomination, queered the election for the Democrats, handing the nomination to a tired and compromised Hubert Humphrey; it began the conservative counter-revolution with Nixon's election.

So, if Obama is to be eliminated, it would be better to do it before he's nominated.

Assassination would not be difficult to manage: the security service assigned to Obama could arrange a hole--it would only take one or two people in his service. Would the KKK or white supremacists allow a black man to become President? Not if they can help it: gunmen should not be difficult to find. Nothing need be direct: the word could be passed along, the time and place when Obama's security detail is not secure. Bam!

Then Hillary would be nominated. McCain or Romney might even seem exciting (!) by comparison. Either way, the crony class would be protected.

I don't wish for this, I post it as a warning. I hope Obama is not the Majorian of the 21st century: the emperor with promise, who was killed by the threatened General behind the scenes.